The last ‘Girls With Hot Rides’ (Lady Driven from here on out)Â Theme Tuesday was in 2010 and to be honest that’s entirely too long.
The days of women rolling around in pink Civics and outrageous Sunfires are largely over and there are a number of ladies doing things just as good (if not sometimes better) than the guys and it’s a damn shame I don’t post them more often.
Ladies I’m sure I missed a few of your cars so feel free to email them in for the next edition.
I’m not exactly one to wish ill towards someone’s project but in the case of this full size GMC I’d have to say this might have been the best thing to happen to it.
In it’s most “completed” state this truck –which is some sort of strange combination of a minitruck, lowrider, and donk—wasn’t exactly the best, nor safest, looking of vehicles.
With no (real) roof, no roll bar, primered bed, and sawz-all’d wheel openings the truck looked a little rushed to say the least, and that was before it flipped over.
Here’s a video of what I can only assume is the same truck hitting switches below, I mean there couldn’t be two… could there?
Vanfest and Importfest Vancouver are taking places this weekend and sadly I will be at neither.
Here are the flyers for the two events, click for more info.
I am looking for coverage from Importfest Vancouver however so if anyone is in the area drop me an email at [email protected]. I’m fortunate enough to have Vanfest covered.
Here’s a look back at Vanfest 17 coverage by Kristina Doyle.
Check out the Vanfest 17 coverage here.
One day when my friends stop getting married and having bachelor parties on Vanfest weekend I will make it personally..
As mentioned in part one of 2013 CSCS season opener coverage Cayuga was packed last Sunday which meant the show and shine was overwhelmingly full.
Let me tell you I was pretty glad to not be a judge at that event because as it must have taken ages to get through the show and shine field never mind try and arrange them in some sort of logical order.
Thankfully I was just there to take photos.
See you all at Grand Bend June 23rd.
Leading up to the 2013 Canadian Sport Compact Series season opener the weatherman was forecasting a very damp day. However judging by Sunday’s attendance at Toronto Motor Sports Park Cayuga very few people put much stock in the weatherman’s early predictions.
Random wind gusts aside the weather couldn’t have been better for the season opener and the venue was the busiest I’ve ever seen it with people parked everywhere including outside of the front gates.
As the only compact car series locally it’s great to see CSCS continue to do well year after year. The event crew puts a lot of work into making the series better and having no attended several years in a row it’s easy to pick up on the improvements.
Going to kick off the 2013 CSCS coverage on the track.
It seems as though everyone in the CSCS field was busy during the off season. Several cars got both visual and mechanical makeovers, some were completely switched out, and driver skill improved all around.
Time Attack at CSCS just keeps getting more competitive with records being broken at essentially every event.
There were a few notable cars missing for the season opener too so it will be interesting to see who stays atop the podium as the season goes on.
Show and Shine coverage tomorrow!
Since the dawn of time ‘under construction’ has been one of the most over used terms in the car scene. Most cars with this proudly displayed on their wind shield or bodywork are either never really under construction or are never going to actually going to get finished. Forever stuck in a half primered state of being until they end up in the scrap yard.
Works in progress however are different. How? Well works in progress generally seem to either get finished or get parted out and are spared the sad fate of purgatory.
Today’s Theme Tuesday is a salute to works in progress, may they all get finished.
Lowriding is one part of the enthusiast lifestyle that is often incredibly misunderstood. To many, even other enthusiasts, painting intricate designs with copious amounts of flake on the frame and underside of an American classic is as silly as… well, building a car that can hop up and down at the carefully timed flip of a switch.
But if you think about it building a show quality lowrider is not unlike building a show quality drift car. Both are meant to be used in a ways a normal car never would and both might as well look damn good while doing it.
Everyone remembers the first time they saw a lowrider. For myself it was via late 90s hip hop, stand out videos predominantly showcasing the cars, include Still D.R.E. and Front 2 Back. Though with the cultures of hip hop and lowriding being so intertwined it’s almost more common to find hip hop videos of that era with lowriders present than without.
Growing up in Mexico City, Ruben’s exposure to lowriding came through print. His father might have been a Volkswagen guy but the second Ruben read a glossy feature on an Impala in Lowrider magazine he knew four pumps, twelve batteries, and hundred spokes were in his future.
Leap forward to present day and Ruben is now the proud owner of one of the best built Lowriders in the country; The Chilango (slang in Mexio for city slicker) 64.
Predictably the car you see here wasn’t built in a day, or even a year, it’s the culmination of a ten year project that started shortly after Ruben found himself here in Canada.
Purchased in 2001 the car spent a few years as a daily driver before he took it off the road to give it a mild restoration. Being the owner and operator of his own business a few years rolled by as he got sidetracked making ends meet.
During that time of on and off work Ruben met Jeff from Switches N’ Thangs and with Jeff’s encouragement and a loving wife’s approval Ruben decided make his ’64 worthy of the pages of the magazine that initially got him hooked.
From that point frame off was the only way to go and so the frame and body were split. The body went to Detroit where Fonz laid down the blue base coat before Kandy N Krome was flown in from California to do all the detailing and flake.
The number of hours in the paint and firewall alone rivals the build time of many previously feature vehicles here on Stance Is Everything. That’s not a knock on those vehicles in the least, it’s just the easiest way to put into perspective just how detailed this work actually is.
I could take a thousand photos and never quite do the paint work justice.
While Kandy N Krome was doing his magic with paint Jeff did his with a welder and grinder. First he “belly-split” the frame –a technique in which the cross member is pie cut and the frame slightly widened- – before it was fully wrapped to withstand the rigors of hopping.
Though this is a detailed build through and through Ruben wanted to be able to hop it now and again without if falling into a state of disrepair.
Once the fabrication work was complete the frame was painted to match the body so when the car was parked on 3 people wouldn’t have any shortage of things to ogle over.
Such a detailed under carriage would of course be marred by factory finished components so everything on this car, both inside and out, was either chrome plated by Metal Coaters or hand polished by Ruben himself including the 700R4 transmission which is supported by a chrome plated cross member with Chevy bow tie.
Inside the dash and speaker covers are flaked and patterned and a blue Dakota Digital setup provides read outs.
The rest of the interior is a combination of new old stock and refurbished items, and the car is now equipped with every power option that was available in 64.
Watching the vent windows move at the press of a button made me wonder how many Impala’s left the factory with this option and how many continue to work today.
The trunk interior is of course again patterned and flaked and full of the prerequisite 4 pumps and 12 batteries. Pumps of choice for Switches ‘N Thangs are two piston Black Magic units done to match the blue exterior.
The six blue batteries are forward of the Focal Amps and subs capable of pounding out classic West Coast rap with utmost clarity.
If you follow the exhaust which exits just behind the 13″ Zenish 100 spokes up to the front you will find a fresh Gm 350 crate motor topped with a Lingenfelter TPI intake.
The motor, which sounded plenty healthy when I was ridin’ in the car, has been tuned by Sasha Anis of SG Racing/Onpoint Dyno fame.
While it looks like a show car, and in many respects is a show car, Ruben has no intent of only having it sit around on stands looking pretty.
He plans to drive this car when the weather is just right so keep an eye out for it in the streets of Toronto and don’t be surprised if you see it in a magazine or two in the not so distant future.
In life it’s important to learn from your mistakes so before I get any further in this post let me state that this is not an attack against Rotiform. I’ve never talked to anyone at Rotiform nor dealt with then in any way shape or form so I have no axe to grind.
They have a strong standing in the aggressive fitment community and I’m a fan of more than one of their designs so I have no slanderous intent.
This post (like my last about cracked wheels) is just an outsiders view of a situation I’ve been following.
In early April I noticed a picture of a horrifically cracked barrel floating around instagram and was pretty surprised to learn that the barrel in question shipped –not originated from– Rotiform in California.
The wheel in question belongs to Nicolaus Pro (iamnicpro) who happens to drive this pretty tidy Benz wagon (which I’ve actually had a draft started about forever but that is besides the point).
After waiting four months for wider barrels to arrive he put his wheels together and tossed them on his Benz wagon only to have them fail shortly after with no warning.
Like any respectable company Rotiform shipped him out a set of replacement barrels post haste but unfortunately these barrels were also not long for this earth taking an exit the exact same way the first ones did.
Nic is running 205/45 on 10″ wheels which is quite the stretch but the barrels do look pretty thin in the photos above so based on the information available it’s hard to say which was a great factor in the failure.
From what I’ve read Rotiform doesn’t actually manufacture these specific barrels and they are sourced from an unnamed company which several other wheel builders use. The fact that there could be a lot of these barrels rolling around is a little troubling.
Hopefully someone from Rotiform sees this post and will add their two cents in regards to what might be causing this in a civil (ie don’t release the hounds) manner.
Until then I wish all the best to Mr. Pro in getting this issue resolved and his future wheel set-ups.
Sucks to roll hard, be careful out there.
Edit:
Since I wrote this Rotiform actually refunded Nic in full and has stopped selling barrels from this manufacturer. Alls well that ends well it would seem.
You can catch me this weekend at the Canadian Sport Compact Series season opener.
Good times will be had there but if you want something a little closer to the city check out Spring Fling.
Here’s a quick peak back at last years CSCS opener.
All of the Meguiar’s Car Crazy Canada’s Best competitors have now been picked with the last group of ten coming from Salon Auto-Sport in lovely Québec City.
After almost not making it to the show due to a freak blizzard that threatened to leave them grounded mother nature eased up  just enough to allow the Meguiar’s team to fly into QC and enjoy what looks to have been an amazing show.
The ten finalists from this round are again a lot of your traditional muscle and hot rod fare with the vehicle getting my nod being Jean Francois Croteau’s ’32 Ford Roadster.
Be sure to get your vote in at Canadasbest.ca before June 16th to send one of these amazing cars to SEMA 2013.
We read his words and see the pictures he puts up every day and it’s not hard to figure out that Dave Thomas has a keen eye for what looks good when it comes to cars and trucks. After all, that’s what keeps readers coming back to Stance Is Everything.
What we don’t often see is Dave’s personal car. Not because it’s not worth showing, but because there simply isn’t enough room for self-indulgence with the ever-growing list of cool cars he can’t wait to show us.
With a 9 to 5 desk job, a one-man-show website, mortgage payments and a passion for BMX, Dave’s Mazda 3 was slow to progress to its current state of being. Let’s not forget he’s also got a wife, two cats, and a dog that doubles as a site mascot keeping him occupied.
His passion for modified lowered cars and trucks started at a young age and along the way he has had an e30, and a Blazer before eventually finding his way into the import camp.
Things started off innocently enough with the Mazda 3: A white hatchback with lowering springs and a loud exhaust sitting on a local used car lot, dime a dozen in the GTA.
Dave watched it sit for a few weeks and snatched it up when it became clear to the dealer that its “upgrades” weren’t going to net top dollar from Joe Average.
At first, the little 3 was the perfect commuter for getting to work and the skate park, but once Dave started this blog he knew that eventually he’d have to step up his game.
Many long hours searching classified websites netted him the first set of aftermarket wheels for the 3. But Dave had his hand too deep in the cookie jar to stop at just a set of wheels.
When you operate a website called Stance Is Everything, you can’t leave well enough alone, and springs don’t cut it so coils were next on the agenda.
After being extremely disappointed with the fact his coils sat higher than his previous springs Dave collaborated with BC Racing  to help create a set of coilovers for the Mazda3 chassis that was lower than anything  else on the market at the time. This combination of shorter dampers, springs, and lock rings became the precursor to the now standard BC coilover setup for the Mazda 3.
A year later, after more searching, another set of wheels came into Dave’s possession thanks a snowstorm discouraging a potential buyer from making the trek to pick them up. Initially they were not in the best of shape but the price was right.
Since, the 17×8 and 17×9 Work Equips have been fully restored, receiving high polished lips, fresh custom paint on the faces, and clear powder on the bolts, making them better than new.
What people generally don’t tell you is that riding low will cost you and Dave like many others has made a few sacrifices along the way. Weeks after purchasing and installing an aftermarket aluminum skid plate on the car it was destroyed.
Then not too long after the streets of the Toronto took a bite out of his wheels. While all the while, Dave was sacrificing ride comfort for looks. There had to be a better way.
Running a website does have the occasional perks and over the winter season of 2013, Dave got in touch with Air Lift Performance in hopes of reviving their previously shelved Mazda 3 application.
After a little convincing Dave’s car was on it’s way to the Air Lift Performance laboratory in Michigan to aid in developing the final prototype of the bolt on kit for the Mazda 3. A few weeks later it came back across the border riding on air.
The war of words between static and air suspension fans will rage on forever, and now that Dave has been on both sides of the fence, he’ll tell you that once you go to air, you don’t want to go back.
No more worrying about whether you’ll make it up that driveway or over that speed bump, and no more myriad of wood and ramps to jack the car up for simple maintenance.
The final nail in the coffin is the fact that air has allowed Dave to ride exactly how he wanted to from day one and what need not be mentioned is that when he parks, he can drop it lower still.
Now that Dave’s personal car is sorted out to his liking, he’ll be showing it with more pride than ever. When you see him pulling in to a meet, just remember one thing: Dave isn’t there to have you ogling his ride. He’s there to photograph yours.
Text by: Philip Law
Photo Credit: Equals: 22 Photography and Design.
Back with part two of the coverage from this years wildly successful Fitted Lifestyle Event presented by Stretch & Poke! Today’s coverage actually has more photos than part one and to be completely honest there are still vehicles missing that I know I should have shot.
After a few laps I decided to forgo taking photos and instead just hang out with the awesome group of people who made it out.
For those of you who may have some comments or concerns about this years event, the venue, and the organization, rest assured Stretch & Poke team is looking to address any and all issues from this event and only hopes to make the events better as the years go on.
Personally I look forward to attending, being part of, and proving coverage of these meets as they continue to grow.
Before the coverage moves inside I’m going to post a few more of the vehicles parked out and about. It’s worth noting the wind made the parking lot a giant dust ball so don’t hold that against the owners of the cars in these photos, they were clean when they rolled up.
Mother nature is just having an excessively long time of the month.
The guys behind Eurokracy made their way to Brampton from Montreal for this years Stretch & Poke event.
Nice guys with awesome cars and I am looking forward to Eurokracy at the end of the month.
Gill and the Scraped Crusaders were selling some of their new gear at Fitted. The new merch was pretty slick.
As I mentioned in part one of the coverage the venue this year allowed for Stretch & Poke to have a bit of an inside area to feature a few cars, vendors, and sponsors.
It also had an RC drift track which I knocked down pretty much all of the flags for, I still need more practice.
That’s it for coverage of the 2013 Fitted Lifestyle event, sorry if I missed your car. There is always next year!
